266 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
humanity was left without this link between the threefold
spirit and the threefold body.
The Lords of Mind took charge of the higher part of the
desire body and of the germinal mind, impregnating them
with the quality of separate selfhood, without which no
separate, self-contained beings such as we are today would
be possible.
We owe to the Lords of Mind the separate personality,
with all the possibilities for experience and growth thus
afforded. And this point marks the birth of the Individual.
BIRTH OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Diagram 1 will make clear the fact that the personality is
the reflected picture of the Spirit, the mind being the mirror,
or focus.
As when reflected in a pond, the images of trees appear
inverted, the foliage seeming to be the deepest down in the
water, so the highest aspect of the spirit (the Divine Spirit)
finds its counterpart in the lowest of the three bodies (the
dense body). The next highest spirit (the life spirit) is
reflected in the next lowest body (the vital body). The third
spirit (the human spirit) and its reflection, the third body (the
desire body), appear closest of all to the reflecting mirror,
which is the mind, the latter corresponding to the surface of
the pond—the reflecting medium in our analogy.
The Spirit came down from the higher Worlds during
involution; and by concurrent action, the Bodies were built
upward in the same period. It is the meeting of these two
streams in the focusing Mind that marks the point in time
when the individual, the human being, the Ego, is born—
when the Spirit takes possession of its vehicles.
Yet we must not suppose that this at once raised man to